


No Matter the Distance

by RisenHunterFallenAngel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, College Student Dean, Dean is a Sweetheart, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, High School Student Castiel, M/M, Outdoor Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Summer Vacation, Top Dean, Underage Drinking, high school student Castiel/college student Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 17:05:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7722745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RisenHunterFallenAngel/pseuds/RisenHunterFallenAngel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With only three weeks until Dean leaves for uni, Cas becomes increasingly aware of the potential strain their imminent separation might have on their relationship. For months now, they've evaded discussing his departure, but sensing Cas's apprehension, Dean seeks to prove to him that they'll be alright, with some help from a soothing, coastal, late-night drive; stargazing at the beach, paired with stark revelations; and some perhaps indecent acts in the bed of a truck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Matter the Distance

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the [DeanCas Summer Mini Bang](http://deancassummerminibang.tumblr.com/) with [art](http://zafonart.tumblr.com/post/148688578566/no-matter-the-distance-by-risenhunterfallenangel/) by the exceptionally talented [@zafonart](http://zafonart.tumblr.com/).

The Singer-Harvelle basement is rife with calamity, the cumulative cacophony of shitty, too-loud music; raucous, euphoric laughter; tipsy, slurred conversations; persistent cries of “Shots! Shots! Shots! Shots!” from the more overzealous teens present, namely Meg and Gabriel; and thunderous crashes from chairs and lamps toppling over when Sam and Sarah, in their drunken attempt at dancing, loose their footing and stumble into them.

Castiel notices none of it.

His senses are overwhelmed, his faculties immobilized. He’s sitting in the company of a handful of friends who are listening, with rapt attention, to Charlie’s dramatic recounting of her recent coronation as Queen of Moondoor, but he’s too distracted by the sensation of the hard body his back is leaning against and the strong arms wrapped around his middle to register a word of what she’s saying. He’s too distracted by the fingers toying with the hem of his shirt, the calloused thumb rubbing absent circles against his hipbone. Too distracted by the comforting scent of salt and sunscreen enveloping him, the warmth that goes along with it. Too distracted by deep, rumbling laughs released by his ear and kisses dropped at the bolt of his jaw.

He’s too distracted by Dean. 

The hour is unknown to Cas, as is how long they’ve been here, for since his arrival he’s measured time not in minutes, but solely in Dean’s breaths, hot and steady and real against the nape of his neck. He lets everything else fade to the background. This, his proximity to Dean, is all he wants to remember. Three weeks away from now, Dean will be leaving for college, and the fact that moments like these will be further and fewer than Castiel has become accustomed to over the past two years terrifies him beyond measure. Granted, Dean will only be an hour and a half away from home, which, all things considered, isn’t terrible. But Cas doesn’t have a car, and an hour and a half separation is a far cry from living two doors down from one another and sharing classes and lunch periods and rides home everyday and sneaking into one another's rooms when their families have retired to their own for the night. Gone will be their days of spontaneous dates, of midnight excursions to the diner down the road, of entire Saturdays wasted on this very couch, watching old horror films with their tangled limbs obscured by Dean’s Batman comforter. They’ll have breaks to reacquaint themselves to these patterns of codependency, Cas knows, and if he too gets accepted to UCLA, then next year they’ll be able to fall back into old habits as though they were never interrupted - albeit with a change of scenery. 

But first - first they need to get through this year, and even just contemplating what it might have in store for them makes dread pool deep and heavy in Cas’s gut. He reminds himself that perhaps they’ll get lucky, that things will stay the same. Or perhaps they’ll be even closer in the end, despite the distance, as a consequence of understanding how to adapt to change and learning to communicate better than they currently do. But Christ, Dean is needy, and Cas is insecure, so maybe it’ll be too much for them. Maybe, despite their best efforts, the distance will strain their relationship irrevocably, and they’ll have no choice but to break up. The thought alone makes the dread that had coiled itself firmly into Cas’s stomach dissipate, making way for something else, something infinitely more distressing: something akin to the absence of everything. He feels hollow, if not numb, and he has to burrow deeper into Dean’s embrace for assurance that he’s still, in fact, there.

Dean must notice the shift in Castiel’s comportment, for he responds in kind, arms tightening around his waist, drawing him in further. “Something the matter, Casanova?” he whispers, lips brushing against the shell of Cas’s ear. 

“Not yet,” comes the hesitant reply, subsequent to a respire’s pause. “Won’t be long now, though.”

They’ve not established this dialogue before. Perhaps through unspoken agreement they concluded that not talking about Dean’s departure would prevent it from occurring, but the evidence of their naivety is present all around them, in the form of well-wishes from friends and family, orientation packets in the mail, and Kurt Vonnegut and George R. R. Martin packed in boxes, ready for transit. Just as unspoken was their mutual understanding that this conversation had been postponed long enough, that its manifestation was inevitable. Cas might not have said it outright, but Dean understands nonetheless. He presses a kiss behind Cas’s ear. “Let’s get out of here, yeah?” 

They attempt to escape without drawing attention to themselves, which, by all accounts should be feasible, considering that most of the people in the basement are too inebriated to walk straight, but they barely make it halfway to the door before Jo calls out to them with a reminder to use protection, which is followed by Balthazar asking if their accidental baby can be his namesake should they not use any after all. Sammy exaggerates a retch. 

All in all, not the most stealthy of getaways, but they’ve certainly had more eventful ones. 

“Your room?” Cas proposes, when the others are out of earshot and they’ve shut the basement door behind them. “Or my place? My folks are out, I think.”

Dean shakes his head, reaching for Cas’s hand. “How ‘bout a drive?” 

“We’ve been drinking,” Cas frowns, and Dean’s instinct is to kiss the lines of worry away from his forehead until they ease under his lips. So he does. 

“You had like half a beer, babe,” Dean corrects, “and I had none, so we’re golden.” He grabs a set of keys from the catch-all dish at the front of the house and swings the door open, gesturing for Cas to walk through. 

Castiel stops before crossing the threshold and faces Dean head-on. “Really? You?”

“Don’t look so surprised, Cas. I can makes good choices, sometimes, when I’m feeling real motivated.”

“What motivated this one?”

Dean holds the door with his foot, brings his hand to Cas’s waist. “Lookin’ out for you, sweetheart,” he drawls, and ducks down to plant one on Cas’s cheek. 

When he pulls away, Cas makes no effort to leave the house. He just scrutinizes Dean, eyes wide with adoration and curiosity. “You planned this,” he says, after a moment. “The drive, I mean. You planned it.”

“Guilty.” Dean smirks. “I knew I wanted to steal you away at some point, so I just kept my hands on you so I wouldn’t get ‘em on any bottles instead.”

“And here I was, thinking it was because you loved me,” Cas deadpans. “Woe is me.”

“Alright, that’s enough, you dork,” Dean chuckles, “Let’s get the hell outta dodge.”

They get in a car Cas has never seen before: a charming old truck that, in the dark at least, seems in impeccable shape considering that it must be 40, maybe 50 years old. Dean would sooner be found dead than driving anything built later than the 70’s. “I’ve been restoring her all summer,” he explains, once they’ve escaped the sounds of city and made it onto a quiet, ocean-side road. His voice sounds clearer here, crisp, no longer suffocated by music and aimless, drunken chatter. “I figured I’d take her out for a test drive before handing the keys over to the owner, make sure she runs smoothly ‘n all.”

Cas wants to ask when the owner is expecting the car back. He wants to ask if Dean has any money on him right now and, if he doesn’t, how far north they could get with this tank of gas. He’d love for them to bypass UCLA, see Big Sur, San Francisco, Yosemite. They could, if they wanted to - or at least, he believes it for now. Alone out here with Dean on this dark, lonely stretch of road, accompanied only by the smell of palms and salt and hot sand, he could easily forget about everything - about senior year and college apps and the uncertainty of his future with Dean, its deviation from what they’ve known - the whole fucking lot, and just continue to drive over the far-reaching slices of tarmac illuminated by the truck’s high beams until the tank runs dry and color bleeds richly into the sky. 

But then Dean makes a left turn onto a narrow trail of questionable legitimacy, and the illusion is shattered. He reduces his speed significantly, because they’re not on a paved road anymore, but on a beach - nonresidential, non-commercialized by the looks of it - and for several miles they just coast, driving between the cliffs and the ocean. Dean turns into a little alcove in the cliff face, tucked away from the beach’s main drag. He kills the engine, and at once, the constant rumbling Cas had grown accustomed to stopped. Now it was just their breaths and the waves: crashing, ebbing. “D’you know where we are?” Dean asks. 

Cas frowns. “Why would I?”

“Right. Let’s get out of the car then.”

Cas has never been to this beach before, he’s sure of that much. It doesn’t seem to get a lot traffic. Why Dean knows about it, why he specifically sought it out, is entirely beyond him. Until he hops out of the truck and notices that the bed has some blankets and pillows tossed in it, that is. It all shifted in transit, of course, but with some slight alterations, he imagines it would be rather cozy.

“Don't worry, I’m not planning on sleeping here,” Dean is quick to say, and he’s probably blushing, too, gaze fixed firmly on the small, sandy space between his feet and Cas’s, though it's hard to tell for sure in the dark. “But I thought we could sit back there and talk through some things, if you want?”

“Thank you” Cas replies, because it’s easier and less embarrassing than admitting that he’d quite like to spend the night out here with Dean if he could. He clambers into the bed, and Dean follows suit, and then they’re intertwined again, just as they were at Dean’s house, but now there’s nobody else around and there’s no music and they’re a bit more horizontal and there’s an absence of a ceiling above them, but a plethora of stars instead. 

“I’m going to miss you so much,” Cas says, without really realizing it, after a half hour of silent contemplation as to how he would broach the subject. Apparently his subconscious favors the direct approach. 

“You won’t have time,” Dean warns, “Senior year is super shitty.” Cas turns his head to give Dean a smoldering glare, so he amends his statement. “I’m gonna miss you too, Cas.” 

“Enough to drive three hours round trip to see me every weekend?” The question is hopeful, even if only half-sincere. 

“No,” Dean says, with perhaps more conviction than he had anticipated, because then he panics, words jumbling in their rush to be the first ones out: “Yes, I would, but - oh, fuck. Shit. I’m messing up. What I mean is, I’d drive three hours to see you in a heartbeat, Cas, but I’m not gonna need to.”

“What do you mean?” Cas sits up, orients himself to look at Dean properly. “How?” His head tilts a fraction and his eyes narrow. “Why?” 

Dean’s grin, illuminated solely by the moon, is visible through the dark, he’s smiling so wide. “Do you want to know where we are, Cas?”

Cas huffs. “I swear to God, Dean, if you don’t give me a straight answer I’m going to drive this truck into the fucking ocean, and all your hard labor will be for naught, and we will have no way to get home.” 

Dean winks at Cas then, digging into his back pocket for the car key and slipping it into Cas’s. “Go for it, Sweetheart. The car’s yours, anyhow.”

Cas snorts, and shifts again to straddle Dean, hands coming to cup his face. “Are you implying that you wouldn’t mind being stranded here with me, Dean Winchester?” He presses their lips together, briefly, and when he pulls away the space between them is but infinitesimal. “Because I, for one-” Cas stops midway through his sentence. His eyes go wide with shock. “Wait, what the hell did you just say?”

Dean rolls his eyes fondly. “The car is for you, Cas,” he repeats, hands settling on his boyfriend’s thighs. “I sure as shit wouldn’t have spent four months working on one for anybody else.” 

Cas’ lips part in surprise, and his heart swells with adoration. The feeling doesn’t surge and recede though, it persists until Cas feels dizzy with it, until the knowledge that he loves Dean is the only thing that really makes any sense, because the fact that he suddenly owns a car sure as hell doesn’t. “Dean,” Cas whispers, “I can’t possibly make this up to you.” 

Dean shakes his head and draws Castiel in for a long, desperate kiss, teeth and tongue and all for the first time tonight, and Cas sighs into it. “You don’t need to,” Dean mumbles into Cas’s mouth, hands slipping under Cas’s shirt, fingers ghosting across his spine. “Fixin’ it up for you was selfish of me anyhow.” He’s not sure Cas can hear him properly, because he keeps interrupting his words with kisses and shallow breaths, so he pulls away with great reluctance and a gentle tug to Cas’s bottom lip, then rests their foreheads together. “I figured if we both had cars, we could meet up here most weekends. Or during the week. Whatever you’ll give me, Cas.”

Cas grinds his hips down against Dean’s and they groan in unison, voices ringing clear in the night, layered over the waves’ gentle lapping against the shore. “Why here?” Cas questions breathlessly. “Why did you bring me here?”

The response is postponed, clearly premeditated, as Dean first takes a few moments to divest Cas of his shirt, fingernails dragging against his sides as it is peeled up and off his chest, gaze trailing after every new inch of exposed skin. Cas begins to wonder if this is all they came here for when Dean finally speaks again. “Because this is about 45 minutes away from both home and UCLA,” he offers. “We’ll meet each other halfway, whenever we need to.” He flips them over, pinning Cas’s body beneath his own, and stares earnestly into Cas’s disbelieving eyes. “I’m not going a week without seeing you, Cas. Not if I can help it.”

Cas nearly sobs at that, at the relief that curls inside him, easing the doubts and fears he has accrued since Dean’s admittance to UCLA. He doesn’t, though. Instead he laughs, all teeth and gums and crinkling eyes. “Really?”

Dean chuckles, in turn, and leans in to kiss Cas again, just the briefest press of lips. It’s too much teeth because they’re smiling so wide, but they sigh into it anyhow, uncertainty dissipating. “Mhm. You ain’t getting rid of me that easily, Cas,” he assures, then opts to resume the engagement his words had interrupted, though with more insistence, more urgency, and fumbling hands thrown into the mix. 

The bed of the truck is a bit small, they learn. Stripping each other down is an ordeal, the process of toeing off shoes and unfastening belts far less fluid than when they do this in their rooms. They’re cramped and their limbs have to bend in awkward angles, but perhaps the core of their struggle lies in the fact that there’s no space at all between them they’re holding each other so close. There’s an urgency to the way they grip at one another, nails digging into backs and thighs and shoulders; a desperation to the way they kiss, tongues tangling languidly, persistently, and they scarcely pull away to breathe. But they manage, in the end, after some trial and error, to peel everything away until and there’s nothing between them at all and it’s just heated skin flush against skin. 

Dean reaches blindly into the utility box to the right of Cas’s head, pulls out a bottle of lube and a rubber. “How do you wanna do this?” he asks, and Cas shudders at how wrecked he sounds already, how wrecked he looks, chest flushed and lips swollen.

“Fuck me, please” Cas whimpers. His pupils are dilated, his hair in an even more impressive state of disarray than usual. 

“Yeah. Yeah, of course, Cas. Anything you want,” and then he’s reaching for a pillow and sliding it under Cas’s hips, encouraging him to wrap his legs around his waist. He opens the lube with a click, and squirts a liberal quantity into his fingers, coating them. Cas gasps when Dean eases a first finger inside him, and winces, later, with the eventual addition of a second and third. But Dean is right there with him through it all, with whispered praises and repeated encouragements and his other hand wrapped firmly around Cas’s dick, thumbing at the slit, to distract him from the pressure. Cas never quite acclimated to this, to Dean giving him all of his attention, without expectation that the gesture will be reciprocated. Dean gets off on this, on taking care of Cas, and it’s evident in the fact that his own dick, though neglected, is hard and aching and leaking precum. Even once Cas insists that he’s ready and urges Dean to get a move on and fuck him already, Dean pumps his fingers a few more times, just in case, before focusing on himself at all, before sliding the condom on and lathering his dick with an obscene amount of lube. 

And then, when he finally, finally, guides himself to Cas’s rim and pushes in, deriving pleasure for Cas is still his priority. “You’re doin’ so good, sweetheart,” he groans, and immediately his mouth is on Cas’s, then along his jaw, down his neck, across his chest, his tongue laving over the red, purpling marks his teeth leave in their wake. And then his tongue is circling around Cas’s nipples, and he resumes his swift, steady stokes when Cas’s dick is again in hand. Along with it all there’s the constant rolling of his hips, his acute awareness of how Cas’s body responds to his. He reacts accordingly, changing the angle just slightly until Cas releases a broken, shuddering cry and he knows he’s hit home. With every sharp thrust of his hips from then on, he’s nailing Cas’s prostate, and he continues his ministrations with his hands and tongue and brings the both of them closer and closer to orgasm until they’re right there, on the precipice. With a final flick of Dean’s wrist, everything comes crashing down in waves around Cas, and he’s cumming with a cry onto their chests. He tenses, heels and nails digging deep into Dean’s back and it’s then -it’s only ever then- that Dean lets himself cum, too. 

And then it’s over, but still there’s Dean taking care of him, wiping him down with a clean rag from the utility box, mouthing kisses into Cas’s sweat-soaked skin when he pulls out, and deliberately collapsing next to Cas rather than on top of him. They lay in a spent, boneless tangle of limbs, fingers tracing idle patterns against their freshly marked-up skin.

There’s talk of getting dressed, of getting back in the truck and driving home, but nothing comes of it. They simply lay there, breaths matched, in this truck they christened with only the stars as witness, and allow the waves to lull them to sleep. Dean nods off first, and Cas gazes reverently at him, admiring with abandon the curve of his lips, the freckles dusting his face, and the thick eyelashes fanned out across his cheeks. Sleep claims him, too, in time, and he rests well with the knowledge that nights like these will compensate for an hour and a half of separation. They’ll make them worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was not beta read, so I do apologize for any and all errors. I hope you enjoyed it nevertheless! You can find me on tumblr [@risenhunterfallenangel](http://risenhunterfallenangel.tumblr.com/).


End file.
